How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

After looking into different things can be done to make intake rollers I came across that many teams use surgical tubing on some kind of round stock. I am curious how in which teams make said rollers. Thanks

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

I think those are actually made of poly cord instead of surgical tubing, or at least the ones I've seen. There's something similar at the bottom of this page. Is that it? If so, I think the poly cord is just wrapped around rollers, at least one of which is driven by a motor.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

I think they just force the surgical tubing on with some alcohol.

More information there:
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...51#post1426351

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

ment more like the roller 254 used to intake balls with this year and in past years

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

We did a latex surgical tubing roller this year. Just a little bit of alcohol does it. A little goes a long way. The hardest part was trimming up the ends of the rubber without it sliding or looking like crap. To do that, we put the tube assembly in the lathe and very carefully trimmed the ends with a box cutter. Our intake was actually a 3-roller system with polycord running in grooves of the latex tubing (using #25 chain for power transmission), which fed right into our shooter.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

Make sure that whatever you are using as the base roller, such as a tube, is plugged at one of the ends. Attach your surgical tubing to an air hose nozzle using a zip tie or something. While blowing air(you will need to control pressure and flow) have a second person slowly push the tubing over the roller. Do not pull. Do not squeeze the tubing to tight if your hand is over the roller while pushing, it will turn into a balloon animal and pop.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

We didn't need any air at all for ours. With the rubbing alcohol, it slipped on quite easily.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

We used the above process to put 1" ID 1.5" OD latex tubing over 1.25" OD aluminum tube for our intake this year. As soon as you let off the air it is incapable of even being persuaded to move by use of force alone, you either float it some more with air or cut it off. It is very nearly a permanent installation method.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

Wow, with a difference of .25 diameter I would have expected needing epoxy or something. We used Polyurethane tubing this year much closer in size to our roller and ended up needing epoxy.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

We used compressed air and soap and water. That allowed it to slip over the aluminum tube.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

+1 for this method.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

Not 0.25" over, 0.25" interference fit. 1 inch ID rubber tube onto 1.25" OD aluminum tube.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

Ah, my reading comprehension needs some work :o

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

Did you find that this method changed the OD at all?

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

It probably ended up between 1.625" and 1.700" OD overall, I'm not actually sure what it came out to. But it was for sure smaller than 1.75"

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

Here is the exact latex tubing we used.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#5234k91/=13a807t

This is the aluminum tubing we used.

https://www.zoro.com/value-brand-tub...f7/i/G3344862/

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

Alternative method that is somewhat questionable.

We used a bicycle inner tube for our shooter this year - not the same as intake but equally difficult to attach.

We used the air method to get the inner tube over a piece of aluminum tube slightly larger than the un-stretched tube. We then rolled the tube up into a ring and removed it then used a 6 jaw lathe chuck to stretch the entire tube at once until we could fit the 4" aluminum drum in the middle of the chuck and roll the tube onto it.

Bicycle inner tube works really well, but you need to clean it with something that will get rid of the powder. We used soap and water before it was on and then wiped with a rag with brake cleaner applied since it eats away the top surface of the rubber it will make it nice and sticky.

Re: How do you make surgical tubing roller
 

I have used the warm lightly soapy water technique for sliding grippy hose material onto an aluminum tube roller.

I have also used this technique to install AndyMark collector stars which have a 0.5" square hole onto a 0.75" square shaft. The warm lightly soapy water causes the rubber to expand a little bit, and slide freely on the metal. Once dry, the pieces grip very tightly and do not more.

For mini-bot rollers, I know on a couple of them we used the regulated air and nozzle technique to install surgical subbing on shafts.